I believe a poor download was/is available from Amazon. A Japanese CD may have also been available.

There is nothing currently on Amazon regarding a download. POPEYE was issued on CD by Japan's Think! Records (THCD-126) in 2010 (UPN 4-988044-614420).

The POPEYE LP was originally released on Boardwalk Records. Boardwalk Records was a label founded by Neil Bogart in 1980, after PolyGram acquired his Casablanca Records. Boardwalk folded in 1983, soon after Bogart died. It's unclear who currently owns the Boardwalk masters. One source suggests that Margate Entertainment is the current rights holder, but another suggests that Bogart's sons, who re-started the label as part of The Boardwalk Entertainment Group in 2010 may be the owners.

I really like my old LP (and CD-R transfer) but would buy an expanded release in a heartbeat, which should include the missing/cut songs from the film (The Hamburger Song) plus the score tracks by Tom Pierson. I thought, as the film is Disney, maybe Intrada could get this one out, warts and all. I believe in fairies, I believe in fairies...

As mentioned, there was a Japanese CD release of the album cuts but with no extra tracks. There are tapes floating around of Nilsson's original demos of the songs that would make for nice extras if this ever gets an expanded release. And if they really want to go all out, the French LP pressing is significantly different from the Boardwalk LP release, including not only vocals of some of the songs in French but several instrumental tracks not on the U.S. album.

"Why was this film a flop?" -------------------------- I'm a big fan of the film and get a kick out of watching it every time I do, but I can easily see why the film was a flop. The bizarreness of the characters are really at odds with the very realistic settings in the film (the whole town was built in Malta* just like a real fully functioning town), the songs are goofy and come outta nowhere and Altman's weird direction and overlapping dialogue style sometimes comes off like strange indie/arthouse drama! It works for me and it's a truly unique film, but the whole world don't think a lot like us 'round here (hey, we hear and notice music while we're watching films!)

* I paid a visit there some years ago and I was like a kid in a sweetshop, visiting all the bits that were left. Just seeing the town spire in the distance, as we approached, had me as giddy as a schoolboy (copyright - Dr Else Schneider

Popeye, in reality, wasn't actually a flop. A bit of a disappointment, maybe, but not an actual flop. It made $60 million worldwide on a $20 million budget. It actually made $6 million in its opening weekend in December 1980, which was pretty impressive for that time. For comparison, 2 years later on nearly the same weekend, Tootsie opened at #1 with $5 million. The real Paramount/Disney disappointment was Dragonslayer, which cost about $18m and made back only about $14m. But for some reason, Popeye has always been unfairly maligned as a bomb, when it was far from it. Popeye's opening weekend per screen average (the average amount each of the 901 screens showing Popeye opening weekend made on the film in 1980 dollars): $7,004 (remember, in 1980 dollars). The amount Riddick just made on each of it's screens in 2013 dollars: $6,010. Adjusted for inflation, Popeye's per screen take on opening weekend was just a hair short of $20,000. That puts it on par with the averages from current film's like Star Trek Into Darkness, Monster's University, and Despicable Me 2 and better than the opening averages of just about everything else this summer short of Iron Man 3, Fast and Furious 6, and Man of Steel. In fact, adjusted for inflation, Popeye made $170 million.

I think an expanded version is a great idea. I picked up a CD of it from a shop a few years back and the instrumental end titles, specifically when it goes to strings for 'He Needs Me' is breathtaking. Something so classically perfect about that part of the cue. It's almost certainly a dodgy release because I don't think the instrumental end credits were included on the album versions. So I would certainly encourage a authorized one.

Perhaps some forgot the horrible audio mix for this film? It was well documented at the time. This film was plagued with problems. One being a hurricane destroyed their outside set and they had to rebuild it. (If memory serves) I personally didn't find the acting all that inspired. Popeye's fake arms were embarrassingly bad prosthetics. Some of the songs were cringe worthy. I might pick up a CD for nostalgia reasons, but I thought the film was pretty bad when I saw it on first release.

I am a big Robert Altman fan, and this film actually fits quite easily into his oeuvre (which features his long, voyeuristic takes and overlapping dialogue), much better than it tends to fill its genre requirements. Indeed, Altman liked a lot of the rougher scratch recordings than the more polished recordings that were being made for the final mix, which is why a lot of the songs sound very spare in the film.

There is a lot about the making of this film and its music in the Robert Altman biography Jumping Off the Cliff by Patrick MacGilligan.

I am a big Robert Altman fan, and this film actually fits quite easily into his oeuvre (which features his long, voyeuristic takes and overlapping dialogue), much better than it tends to fill its genre requirements.

I think that's as good a desciption as any of the reason for its box-office results. I think my personal disappointment with it has lessened with repeated viewings, knowing now what I do about Altman's style.